Nothing Changes
by strawberryblush
Summary: Rin copes with growing up.


It wasn't until she was older that she realised what the visits were.

When she was younger, she had just accepted it - it had become a fact of life. That however far into the wilderness they went, every 3 months or so, she, Lord Sesshomaru and Jaken would inevitably find themselves stood outside the doors of a demon's palace.

How they stood was always the same. Jaken would fret, repeating what small snippets of information he could glean about the current situation over and over again, as if the facts were some sort of comfort blanket, or maybe like they were puzzle pieces, and if he just said them right he'd see the overall picture that had previously been obscured.

Her Lord was calm as ever,his gaze level and untroubled. Try as she might, she often couldn't help but compare him to a river, or a pool - able to look so calm on the surface, but concealing so many dangers and strengths beneath the unruffled water.

She would stand at his side, confident, if slightly confused. The visits were the only thing the Lord didn't explain. His every other action, every path they walked, he'd drop bits of information, droplets of it, about what they were doing, where they were going, why they had chosen this path. They often took a large amount of brain work to link together, but she got there in the end, and often she suspected that was why he'd done it - to make her think.

When she was older, she wondered if this was supposed to be some sort of extraordinarily subtle apology for how haphazard her education was. She never worked out the answer.

But the visits - he never explained the visits.

There were things that were constants about them though - there were never any meetings. Often, other trips, other demons, there would be politics to discuss, which she was included in more and more as she got older. She had seen alliances proposed, agreed, denied, war declared and retracted. She had even seen her Lord sidestep a marriage proposal with such verbal grace that it took the other clan a few minutes to realise they'd been rejected.

But there were never any meetings for these types of visits.

They never stayed more than two nights, but always stayed at least one.

Rin and Jaken were roomed at opposite ends of the palace to their Lord - a direct opposite to their normal stays in demon palaces. Lord Sesshomaru would often make a point of requesting they be kept nearby. Not on these visits - these they were kept far apart, and rarely saw Lord Sesshomaru during their stay.

And, finally, there was always, always, a female demon in residence.

But these were the only constants. Their reception varied - some servants greeted them on their knees with bowed heads, others with barely concealed sneers, although all were courteous to Lord Sesshomaru.

The female demons themselves also varied - some were human and beautiful to Rin's eyes. Others were not so. All greeted Lord Sesshomaru with eager eyes, and even Rin, young as she was, could sense the anticipation pouring off them, seeming to rise to a crescendo when Lord Sesshomaru would ask the palace servants to look after Rin and Jaken, and they turned to follow the order.

Rin tended to spend her time in the gardens, although Jaken would often amuse himself by blocking her way until she'd read for a sufficient amount of time. Her knowledge, and the education that supported it, was spotty.

She was fluent in several languages used by demons, but found herself having to strain her ears to understand the speech of other humans. She could recite etiquette and expected courtesy for every situation off the top of her head...

But she drew a blank if someone asked her her favourite poet. Or even basic human politics.

She was even more lacking in knowledge about human society and other human trappings than she was about any other subject. Jaken had once been fond of lecturing her on the subject, but Lord Sesshomaru put a stop to it when he discovered Jaken was even less learned on the subject than Rin.

When she was 12, she started her monthlies - she had scared all of them, she thought, looking back on it. She had found blood in her underwear and had found herself unusually calm about it, feeling almost as if she was watching herself from outside her own body.

But Jaken had certainly panicked when she had returned to camp with blood on her hands and in her scent, with an odd look in her eyes. His panic made Rin panic, and she had started to cry, not knowing what it was, and fearing that she had done something wrong.

Her fearful wails and Jaken's twitters had brought Lord Sesshomaru at one of the nearest things she'd ever seen in him to 'a rush'. He took one look at her bloody hands, and had swept her onto Ah-Un and to the nearest healer. Thankfully, that healer was Kaede, or she didn't know if she would have been able to have born the embarrassment of her lack of knowledge about her own body.

Sesshomaru had waited outside while Kaede had run through everything with her - how the cycle worked, and how she would have to bear this trial every month - Rin groaned - and how to plot her course, and at which point in it she could become pregnant.

Rin had queried her then - how did one become pregnant? She knew it had something to do with a man, but other than that, she didn't know.

Kaede looked, for the first time, slightly nervous. "Ah..." she said, when she was interrupted by the sudden movement of the door, and they both turned to find Lord Sesshomaru stood in the doorway.

"No," he simply said to Kaede. "I will explain when it is time - let her keep her innocence."

Kaede had thrown a disapproving look. "She will soon be in danger of such things, even if she is not willing; you are not with her all the time."

"That is not your concern," had been her Lord's engimatic reply. Rin had simply sat dumb between them, too baffled to ask what they were talking about, while Kaede bristled at his response.

They returned to camp, Rin blushingly carrying a bag of 'womanly neccessities', and Lord Sesshomaru as unruffled as ever. The strangeness of it all made it easy for her to brush off Jaken's shrieks about how she was useless for worrying them all and making a nuisance of herself to Lord Sesshomaru for something that wasn't even fatal.

There had been no visits for over a year after that. Occasionally they would be drawn into sight of a demon palace, once one of them was even one he'd visited before.

Each time, Lord Sesshomaru had ordered them to continue on, with as little explanation as he gave for the visits - and each time, Rin could have sworn she felt him look at her. Each time she looked at him, his gaze was fixed on the horizon, as implacable as ever.

The visits started again soon after they walked into the middle of a bandit attack - Lord Sesshomaru had dealt with them all so easily, it was almost casual, but the one closest to Rin was only fatally injured, not killed outright, and he took a swipe at her with his sword.

She, used to dodging Jaken's staff, had nimbly sidestepped the blow, then stepped into the opening and punched him in the face with the heel of her hand aimed at his nose.

The man dropped.

Lord Sesshomaru smiled.

3 days later they were stood outside a palace, and Rin and Jaken were ushered away from Lord Sesshomaru's wing of the palace as if the gap had never taken place.

What he and Kaede had been referring to that first monthly-day became clear when she was 17. She had just been outfitted with a new kimono, one that made it quite obvious that she was no longer a girl; she was a woman. She had felt uncomfortable by some of the stares aimed at her by the villagers as she exited the village, but thought nothing more of it until she saw Lord Sesshomaru watching their reactions...and then looking thoughtfully at her.

When they got back to camp, he bade them both stay within the firelight until he returned, then disappeared back in the direction of the village.

Anxious butterflies played in her stomach all through dinner.

Finally, as the moon rose, Lord Sesshomaru arrived back and stood, looking at her.

"Rin, come with me - Jaken, guard the camp," he said.

She wordlessly got to her feet and followed.

They moved through the woods soundlessly, the moonlight guiding their steps, until they came to a small coppice in the forest. Lord Sesshomaru gently guided them both into the deepest shadows surrounding the clearing, so that no one would see them.

They spent nearly an hour waiting in silence, until Rin - confident in Lord Sesshomaru though she was - could not help but wonder what they were here for.

Then she heard the sound of running feet, and a young man, no older than she was, burst breathlessly into the clearing. Now they were watching him wait. He paced the clearing nervously, occasionally sitting on a convenient log, then leaping up to pace again. He scrubbed at his teeth with his finger, then tied and retied his hair. He huffed and stared at the moon, then finally sat crosslegged on the grass in the middle of the clearing, staring in the direction he had come from.

Some five minutes later, more footsteps could be heard, and a young woman - a rather pretty young woman, also entered the clearing, slightly more demurely than the man had done.

"You came," the man cried, jumping to his feet and rushing to embrace her.

"I could not have left you waiting," replied the woman, equally fervently. "For you are the moon to my star, the sun to my flower, the-"

Her romantic cajoling was cut off when the man leaned forward and firmly kissed her.

Rin gasped, despite herself - Lord Sesshomaru's warning hand on her shoulder made her quiet again. Thankfully, the embracing couple were far too involved in each other to have heard her.

"Please, my love," said the man, hands beginning to untie the woman's obi. "Please - it is not your fertile time, is it? We won't risk pregnancy?"

He obligingly paused as the woman squinted into the middle distance, obviously straining to remember her cycle. Then, her face cleared. "No, my love, let us proceed!"

Then she set about stripping him with as much enthusiasm as he was showing to her.

Rin and Lord Sesshomaru stood and watched from their corner, Lord Sesshomaru impassively, Rin with both hands clamped over her mouth so not to make any further noise.

They continued to stand and watch as the act was completed, then repeated, then fond lovers farewells were said, and the couple left the clearing. Only then did they themselves withdraw from their shadows and head back in the direction of camp, Lord Sesshomaru still silent, Rin still beet-red from embarrassment.

After maybe five minutes of walking, Lord Sesshomaru spoke.

"Do you understand?"

Wordlessly, Rin nodded.

There was a pregnant pause, as if he was pondering how best to phrase anything further.

"Do you also understand that the female partner does not always have to be...willing for the act to take place?"

Rin's mind boggled as she tried to take in what he was saying - partaking in the act she'd just seen was bad enough, but to be made to do so unwillingly...!

Her mind flashed back to the bandits, and Lord Sesshomaru's smile, and her heart sank at the implications.

She nodded again, miserable. Why couldn't she have been a demon? She was certain she'd have made a better demon than human and then she wouldn't have had to worry about all this nonsense.

Lord Sesshomaru spoke a third time, this time sounding more hesitant than before.

"It is...traditional to marry, for humans, before that act takes place. It is also traditional to ask permission of one's liege lord before courtship begins."

She felt a wave of relief crash over her. Lord Sesshomaru truly could protect her from everything - even this!

She nodded acknowledgement happily, and her pace picked up beside him.

He said no more that evening, but when they left in the morning, they passed by the village once more. As they began to leave it's sight, Lord Sesshomaru paused and turned to look at her, a slight question in his eyes.

She looked back, blankly.

"You may go where you wish," he said, simply.

She threw him a frankly horrified look, and, as if to punctuate her answer, all but threw herself into Ah-Un's saddle.

"I wish to go with you," she said, an edge of stubbornness in her voice.

If she hadn't known better, she could have sworn she heard a snort of amusement behind her as they walked on, leaving the village behind them.

The last puzzle piece for the visits slotted into place come sundown in early autumn. It was Jaken that spotted the wolf tracks, but Rin had heard the approaching snarls and both of them scrambled up a tree to avoid the pack that entered beneath them.

Game was still plentiful at this time of year, so Rin knew they weren't in any immediate danger, but she still wished for them to go - they gave her unpleasant flashbacks to her life before her death.

Apparently no one was listening to her prayers as the wolf pack settled beneath them for the night, and she and Jaken exchanged a look, appreciating that they were stuck where they were until Lord Sesshomaru returned and drove them off.

She couldn't help but watch them - paranoia about being attacked mostly, but she also liked their resemblance to Lord Sesshomaru in his true form.

The alpha male, especially, was a particularly fine specimen, his grey fur taking on an edge of silver in the fading light.

Then the alpha female wandered in, and after some initial snarling, they performed 'the act'.

Rin averted her eyes, feeling at once uncomfortable and a strange sensation in her lower belly.

'Thank goodness Lord Sesshomaru doesn't indulge in such acts,' she thought. 'Then again, it's not like he has any female demons around to -'

Her mind stopped, and then went blank, as if it was refusing to grasp the enormity of the leap of logic she had just made.

Slowly, like one might prod a sore tooth, she prodded her hypothesis.

For a brief second, she experienced a flash of enormous anger at herself for not seeing it sooner. The visits, the female demons, her and Jaken being sent to a different part of the palace - it was all so damned obvious, why had it taken her this long to work it out?

She felt something crumble inside her, and build itself back up in an instant.

It took until a week later that she worked out exactly what had been rebuilt - it was her view of Lord Sesshomaru, and thus, of the world.

She had previously held Lord Sesshomaru as a deity, truly a being among beings, and certainly one that would not debase himself so to perform an activity that was, at its heart, so carnal and base.

Resultantly, she had held the activity itself in disgust, taking Lord Sesshomaru's hesitation in speaking about it as a mark of his disfavour.

Now, she could only see it differently.

For if Lord Sesshomaru partook, then the act could not be so repulsive...surely?

She took quite some days puzzling over this in her head, until, almost before she'd noticed it, they were standing outside a demon's palace once more, and once more a female greeted Lord Sesshomaru with hunger - obvious, so obvious, how had she not seen it before? - in her eyes.

As she was shown - too old now to be 'ushered' - out towards her room for the night, she glanced back towards Lord Sesshomaru.

He held her glance for a second, and then they looked away, but all it took was that second for Rin to realise that things might have changed - but none of the important ones had.

When they left the next afternoon, Lord Sesshomaru paused for her outside the palace gates, and looked pointedly towards the strands of smoke winding upwards from a nearby valley - there was a village down there, it seemed.

"You may go where you wish," he said, his voice emotionless.

She snorted. "Now you're being silly." This time, there was no amused snort answering her, but as she swung up and onto Ah-Un, she swore she saw him, just for a brief second, smirk.

She grinned as they took to the air. Nothing changes.


End file.
